Hypertext as Collage Writing
From The Digital Dialectic (MIT Press, 1999)
By George Landlow (Victorian Web founder!?)
external image 41LSzC77QPL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
external image 41LSzC77QPL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
external image george-landow.jpg
external image george-landow.jpg

Summary:
In attempting to translate a hypertext web presentation into publication format for a traditional print text, Landlow processes the metaphor of hypertext writing as a collage. He argues that this framework that invites us to recognize hypertext "as a mode that both emphasizes and bridges gaps, and that thereby inevitably becomes an art of assemblage in which appropriation and catechresis [a word or phrase applied outside conventional meaning] rule" (170).
Like collage, hypertext often includes appropriating materials and supplementing them as context seems to demand.


Commentary:
I appreciated Landlow's point that hypertext is better described as multisequential or multilinear rather than simply nonlinear. A path remains, but self-determined rather than universal (154). He also argues that beyond simply employing links, hypertext that realizes its full potential provides the reader with increased power and multivocality.

Question